LAHSA Missed Its Federal Audit Deadline

LAHSA Interim Chief Executive Officer Gita O’Neill is at the desk during the meeting. Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer is at the podium.

The Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority (LAHSA), which has a projected $829 million budget has missed its Federal Audit Deadline.

On March 25, CTN received a message from LAHSA Communications Director, Ahmad Chapman about a Viewpoint, which featured thoughts by Hank Wright and by Tim Campbell, (“This Can’t Go On . . .LAHSA Misses Federal Audit Deadline.”)

Chapman wrote: “Given that the article’s central premise rests on a factual error about our filing timeline, we request that the story be retracted in its entirety to prevent the further spread of misinformation.”

Chapman pointed out that since the deadline was March 31, LAHSA had not missed its deadline when the story printed on March 19. CTN printed Chapman’s letter.

Today, April 2, CTN wrote Chapman and asked about the audit. “Yes, LAHSA did miss the deadline,” he wrote. “You can find the reason why in the video of the March 31 Commission Meeting” click here.

Consequences for missing a deadline could include suspended federal funding, debarment from future awards and costly penalties.  Funding services include L.A. County ($379 M), City ($290.3M), State ($88.6M), Federal ($69 M) and private donor ($1.6M). The L.A. Board of Supervisors are pulling $300 million in annual funding from LAHSA, effective July 2026.

During the 40-minute video, LAHSA tried to explain why they missed the deadline and explained the earliest it might be submitted is April 24.

The interim Chief Executive Officer of LAHSA is Gita O’Neill. About 22 minutes into the tape, she said, “Our staff made a good faith effort to meet the deadline. Changes required shifts in responsibility and adjustments to internal processes particularly around document coordination and the submission timelines. As a result, we could not get all the required materials to the auditors as quickly as needed.”

And the reason? O’Neill said, “We were managing multiple overlapping demands on our finance team.”

O’Neill said they had to respond to a county audit at the same time because the county would not delay that audit and that LAHSA was prioritizing the release of advanced payments to providers.

She also said that LAHSA is going to partner with KPMG, headquartered in London and one of the Big Four accounting firms in the world, to help them reconfigure the finance department.

Members of the LAHSA Commission Board, including Justin Szalsa questioned O’Neill about a February 18 email from the audit firm that warned they wouldn’t make the  deadline if they didn’t receive needed items.

He asks O’Neill why the audit committee wasn’t informed. “It’s just hard for us to understand what’s going on,” he said.

She said there was an update on March 3 to the audit committee and “we expected everything to be on time at that date.”

At the beginning of the tape, the auditor said there were delays at the start receiving materials.

Szalsa noted, “It sounds like there was upfront problems with auditors accessing documentation,” and wondered if LAHSA provided iCloud access, which is standard for auditing.

Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said they had not provided it, because no one had asked.

“It’s a basic thing,” Szalsa said. “it takes the burden off internal teams.”

When O’Neill was asked what HUD’s reaction might be to missing a deadline, she didn’t have an answer. “I wouldn’t want to guess,” O’Neill said.

Tim Campbell, who writes about LAHSA, and the lack of accountability for its funds, told CTN “What really frightens me is how casually everyone other than Commissioner Szalsa seems completely unconcerned with this. The Single Audit is a fundamental duty of any public agency’s finance department.  There is no excuse for missing the deadline, because they know it’s coming.”